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Dioxins, PCBs, and HCB in soil and peat profiles from a pristine boreal catchment

The MCN project “Landscape Regulation Of Contaminant Mobility” has within a framework of an associated project, headed by Associate Professor Karin Wiberg, recently published two scientific publications "Dioxins, PCBs, and HCB in soil and peat profiles from a pristine boreal catchment" and "Modeling the fate of hydrophobic organic contaminants in a boreal forest catchment: A cross disciplinary approach to assessing diffuse pollution to surface waters". Some details of the first article follows.

The aim of this study was to explore how atmospherically derived soil pollution is affected by environmental processes at two typical boreal catchment landscape type settings: wetlands and forested areas. Measurements of hydrophobic organic compounds (HOCs) in forest soil and peat from an oligotrophic mire at various depths were performed at a remote boreal catchment in northern Sweden. HOCs in peat were evenly distributed throughout the body of the mire while levels of HOCs in the forest soil increased with increased amount of organic matter. Evaluation of HOC composition by principal component analysis (PCA) showed distinct differences between surface soils and deeper soil and peat samples. This was attributed to vertical transport, degradation and/or shifting sources over time. The calculated net vertical transport differed between surface layers (0.3%) and deeper soils (8.0%), suggesting that vertical transport conditions and processes differ in the deeper layers compared to the surface layers.

Two typical boreal landscape types, wetlands and forested areas, show different vertical distribution and net vertical transport of HOCs.